Hi,
I am posting this message here for several reasons:
1.
In the hope of eliciting dot5hosting’s reply to my several attempts to get their support.

2.
To get some technical advice on an issue I am having with my FrontPage web. Any response will be appreciated.

3.
To get general advice about this host. Should I look for a different one or should I try and work this thing out with dot5hosting. I don’t intend to flame or harm them. I am just looking for a way to publish my site.

I have signed up with dot5hosting about a week and a half ago, after corresponding with their sales dept. I asked in advance if they will be able to host my web site that was built with FrontPage and they said it would be no problem.

After publishing the site, I have some trouble with setting up my site with them and need some assistance. The shared borders, which are a FrontPage feature, are completely missing and the background color is missing. When viewing the web on my local computer it works just fine.

My first email received a response generally telling me to not use FrontPage for publishing my site, and to use FTP instead. Well, it is important for me to publish through FrontPage because this program tracks changes to my web. Only changes are published so I won't need to upload the complete web each time I change something.

After insisting, another support person responded that he checked my site and found that some of the file names had capital letters and recommended that I use only lower case letters. I did so, but still the problem persisted. I do appreciate the time he took to check this though.

My third email, which is listed here in the end of this post, was sent to them 5 days ago. Since then I sent two more emails requesting some sort of reply. I didn't get any sort of reply from them anymore.

I have therefore decided to post the email here, hoping this will help elicit some response from them. I would have preferred not to have to resort to this way of getting attention, but I do need to know where I stand.

I find that 5 days is long enough to wait for a reply. I would have been more content if they would have said anything, like perhaps:
“We are checking and will get back to you in a couple of days.”
Or maybe:
“It seems we will not be able to host your site.”
or any sort of other response.

I don't know if they are ignoring me in order to hint that I should move on, or because they do intend to help me, but are just being slow at it because I am not first on their priority.

Any way, I have tried another host before them and had the same problem. I therefore would appreciate any advice in this technical matter, and also hope to have some sort of reply from dot5hosting.





So to end this log post, here is the last email that I sent them 5 days ago:
Start of quote:
Hi,
Thanks very much for your reply.
As you suggested, I have now replaced all the caps of all file names I could find into lowercase letters. This includes the names of the *.gif and the *.css files as well.

I did this through FrontPage because then the program also updates references to these files in the html. First I changed the file names to an arbitrary name and then changed it back again to its original name but in lowercase letters. I did this so FrontPage won't disregard changes that are only applied to the case of the letters, as I have heard might happen. I then tried to publish my site again and it still doesn't work. There are no shared borders and the background color is gone.

I tried to read a newsgroup on FrontPage about this and found a couple of possible causes I would like to ask you about:

1.
Could it be that the files were not published properly because the server or FrontPage disregards changes that I applied only to the case of letters and prevents replacing the old files with the new ones? I would greatly appreciate if you could check this. I attached a zipped file of my web again, this time after I changed it. I can't tell if my web was published to the server properly from here.

2.
Could it be that the server has problems reading file names with two dots in them? For example: advantages.htm_cmp_balance110_bnr.gif
This happens in file names that are created by FrontPage. If so I don't know how to solve this. I don't know if I could just change all the file names that FrontPage created without this causing other problems. I don't know if FrontPage won't just recreate the files again with the two dots in their names.

3.
Could be that the file names are too long. Does the server has a limit of 32 characters for the complete paths?

4.
Could it be the FrontPage extensions? I posted a question in the FrontPage newsgroup and one of the experts in FrontPage told me that if these are configured properly I should have no problem.

Thank again for any reply,
I hope very much to find a way to publish my site with your servers.

End of quote.

Sorry but one last final thing:
I forgot to mention that I am using a FrontPage theme for my web. A theme gives the web pages a common look. It may be a source of problems for some servers, because when using a theme, FrontPage creates some css and some gif files in the web, that have long names with a couple of dots inside them.

In my albeit limited frontpage experience, themes and shared borders don't play too well together. What's determining your background? A css file? And are then superceding that with a background statement in the body tag?

You have only recently moved this site. Is the _borders folder in tact, and do the include files in there all have content? I have seen them simply drop when "importing" the site as a whole.

I'm not saying you're right or wrong here, but there are many fiddly aspects of Frontpage. My advice would be to create your site locally to your hearts content, but upload it with something like CuteFTP or any other ftp client that let's you "synch" your local folder to the server (the same as what Frontpage's Publish feature is doing). That way you know what needs to go up, and can send it accordingly.

Dot5 have a good rep, which isn't earnt easily these days. But I could probably name a dozen hosts that would baulk at these sorts of questions (no, I'm not going to Bob :)), because it's not something your host would necessarily be experienced with.

Regards

Gary

In regards to your potential causes:

1. Possibly. There are a few different changes that you can make to a frontpage file that frontpage doesn't consider to be changes. Table sizes for example I think...but yes, this is possible. You should have been able to see what Frontpage was and wasn't overwriting during the publish though. If in doubt, FTP it up.

2. Not that I know of.

3. Not that I know of.

4. Possibly, but if you are Publishing (successfully or not) then the Extensions are there.

Regards

Gary

Matthew,
I am very sorry for not having replied to your emails. I do not really monitor emails sent to my personal address, as we try to make full use of our helpdesk system to ensure that all issues are followed up on as quickly as possible. I have also been handling many projects for our new offerings such as Urchin, Server Status Monitoring, and a major acquisition of another hosting company.
If you would have replied directly to the ticket that I had responded to the issue would have been handled much faster.
I only noticed this thread because Chris pointed it out to me.

If you could please reply to the ticket, and attach a screen shot of how the site is supposed to look, I will try to get everything working correctly for you as fast as possible.

Are the extensions compatible? If you built it using FP2002 and the host only has FP2000, that would cause it too.

Once again somebody turns to WHT before simply replying to a trouble ticket :rolleyes:

Hi Tony,
Thank you for replying.
I did send the previous email to you, but note that I always also sent a cc to your support email, which was answered by you initially.
I now opened a new ticket in your site and look forward to hearing any update from you.
Thank you
Kind regards

Everything else, aside from the support request, may be discussed. Please do not post messages asking for support from your provider on the forum. Handle this part off-board.

Originally posted by Chicken
Everything else, aside from the support request, may be discussed. Please do not post messages asking for support from your provider on the forum. Handle this part off-board.
Yep, but if providers did their job in the first place, folks wouldn't be looking for tech support at WHT. We need to remember that these folks found their provider at WHT and when all else fails, they come back here for help too.

Some feel that they're more secure if they have WHT to fall back on if they get lost in the webhosting world...it's a scary time, especially if you're new to it, and have paid a certain amount of money...I was like that 8 months ago...now I have a little more experience :)

I am just wondering if you fixed this or not, I had a user have the same problem a while back and if you dont have a solution I can dig through my notes and see how I fixed it. PM me if you need to.

aNc

Originally posted by Aussie Bob

Yep, but if providers did their job in the first place, folks wouldn't be looking for tech support at WHT. We need to remember that these folks found their provider at WHT and when all else fails, they come back here for help too.


I agree. It is a scary world out there for people just starting out.
If they have followed what the host says to get support and has allowed the host time to respond, then what is the problem?
I have seen worse posts then this concerning other hosts and no problem!
I have seen hosts called,"cheats,scams,frauds and worse' and not a problem.
There appears to be some special protection concerning this host.
I am not putting Chicken down as I think you do a great job here.
But, when it comes to this host, I see the protection blanket come out at times.
I have been feeling this way for quite some time concerning this matter.
If I have upset you,Chicken, then I am sorry. But, these are my feelings on this matter.